Off the Rails

I completely lost it this weekend.

The trip to NYC had been relatively behaved until Thursday... when a week of not greeting the morning with stepping on the scale caused me to go all delusional and forget to control the food intake. I think it started with that.

On Friday, when I came home... I am not really sure what happened. But I was tired. Tired of obsessing over my weight. Tired of feeling bad about myself and my body. Tired of the constant mental conversation about whether I can eat something, if I should feel guilty about it, if I am too fat to put that in my mouth.

So, yeah, I got a little overwhelmed with the whole diet thing and totally ran off the rails.

There was Chinese food involved. And Pizza. and Cake. Friday, Saturday, Sunday... all "bad".

So now I am 4 pounds heavier than I was when I weighed in last Sunday, and back to being above the "Goal".

But I don't think I can go back to what I was doing before. I was getting weird and crazy and obsessive... Emotionally, it was bad for me. I was starting to think about losing more than the goal... targeting ridiculous pants sizes... I was unable to appreciate just how far I have come (not overnight) and was totally focusing on this tiny number, these little few lines on the scale. Sometimes, I just go insane... it's part of being me.

So - redefining my shrinking journey is in order, I think. I mean... I was doing quite well losing just a couple of pounds a month over the past year or so. It was real weight loss, not the temporary swings kind of loss based on water and how much food weight is in process in the digestive tract and other silly tricks one can play on a scale. And I was happy with it. I think I got over-ambitious just trying to rush through the last few pounds of this journey and instead of focusing on slow and steady wins the race, I got all jack-rabbity and tried to force it off through restriction and exertion.

To continue this ridiculous tortoise and hare metaphor, I guess this weekend was my "the hare takes a nap" interlude.

So I am announcing a new and redefined Shrinking Piggies goal. The "target" weight is still 140. But I am not trying to get there in February. Or maybe not even March. I am going to accept that sometimes on Monday I might weigh more or less. And I think that as long as my weight on any given day of the week does not go over 145 or under 138, then I will call that "success". I will continue to exercise and eat healthy foods, as I was doing previously, with the much slower weight loss. And I am going to be serious about that lower limit too. I do not want to get in a situation where I find myself trying to inch things down, down, down. That's a slope that never ends or leads to serious problems.

Sometimes I guess I just have to go off the rails to find myself in a place where I can get back on a better track.